


Reacclimation

by florahart



Category: The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Anxiety, Multi, Pre-Threesome, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:18:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5521835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yeah, so I survived Mars.  Now I just gotta maybe figure out how to act like a social animal around other humans again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reacclimation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dsudis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/gifts).



> This is a quickie because dsudis used two of zir requests on the Martian (one the book, one the movie), and when I saw that on the pinch list I wanted to make sure zie got at least a little something. :)

One of the really fucking obnoxious things about people is that they talk. A lot. About a lot of things.

No, I know. I can’t really—I wanted to have someone to talk to for fucking months, and I shouldn’t ever complain about companionship again. But. 

Take Johanssen, for instance. No really. Take her. Take her somewhere that is not my quarters by which I mean bed in the medical bay with a hundred fucking wires taped to my everything because I guess they gotta keep tabs on my testicular functions while I learn to digest ordinary foods and sleep regularly again. And see, I like my balls, like ‘em a lot and want ‘em to work as designed, but the fucking tape pulls and it’s not like Mars didn’t have me by the nutsack the whole time I was there, with a twist every few days for fun; I’m not liking the whole yanking on my pubes every time I make a bedsore-avoiding shift in position, and really I’m more concerned with the busted-up state of my ribs right now anyway.

But so, Johanssen. It’s been a full week. She keeps coming by. She keeps bringing food. She keeps staying. And talking. About science, and yeah, science saved my bacon, whatever, but I guess she’s watching the logs whenever she’s not pretty much in my lap, and she keeps suggesting other shit I could have tried and a lot of her ideas are great but some of them are impossible and who am I to say anything is impossible because I fucking colonized Mars by accident with six potatoes and a lot of tarps, but she’s not just on, but buried under and still digging, my last good nerve. I didn't expect it, because she and I used to get along pretty great, but now it's like I can't make myself match myself any more and somehow she's the same but she doesn't fit against me the same way.

I have acclimated to my most recent environment, and my most recent environment is silence and disco.

Probably there is every reason to try to de-acclimate, but look, I have had one fucking traumatic and sudden acclimation experience in the last couple of years already (and it lasted for months), and I am too old for this shit. I am too old for _all_ shit. Seriously, man, the shit I am not too old for would fill a child-size thimble.

Also, all her ideas mostly remind me that I spent almost two fucking years desperately trying every scrap of sciencing I could haul out of my brain, anyone’s laptop, or thin air, and when I pretend to fall asleep she knows I’m faking and when I tell her to fuck off she thinks I’m funny and somehow I can’t tell her I don’t want to think about it. 

I tried. I practiced the words out loud during one of the very brief times I was awake and alone and not, you know, unintentionally crying or gasping for air because I guess those are things I do now. Hearing her give me suggestions doesn’t give me the willies (it just turns me into Oscar the Grouch with profanity and a slightly shaggier hairdo), but saying anything about how I feel about it all out loud makes me feel like I can’t breathe (I know what this feels like, pretty much first hand, thanks) and like my brain might explode out my ears which would be gross and messy and best-case leave me unable to even flip her off any more and god knows I don’t want that.

So I keep suffering her attentions. She brings her tablet and works here, while she talks. Constantly.

When she’s not here, sometimes Beck is. He checks all my readings and generally is the architect of the fucking tape and wires, but he also talks a lot, mostly about her. And hey, it’s cool that they’re together, but let’s revisit: my balls have _tape on them_ and hearing even fairly oblique references to the sex lives of anyone on the ship is kind of terrible and I mean, she and I, before, we sometimes--okay, so it's just a little weird, little uncomfortable, sort of hard to look at.

Lewis, at least, keeps her distance. She came in the first day wearing her Serious Commander Having Emotions face, and we reassured each other our cordial relationship would recover. By which I mean I told her to check my fucking logs, it was never her fault and I said so a hundred times and Jesus Lewis it’s not all about you, and she said she would never have left which made me say well then she’d have been a fucking idiot because we’d all have died because the food would have run out before we got to a potato crop.

But, you know, I think we’ll be okay, because that was a sort of normal, professional-relationship-between-hotshots, conversation. What, I mean, astronauts most have giant brains and giant egos and think we’re right all the time, it’s not just me.

Vogel and Martinez have each showed up a couple of times, but those were pretty normal conversations too. They’re running the ship, with Lewis, and getting my skinny ass home. They think I did fucking awesome, I think they did too, we’re all good, and for real, getting home has been the entirety of my bucket list for months now, so I am all in favor of their work.

But now, thank fuck, today I get to stop being in a medical bed as long as I _promise_ not to overstress my ribs, and I get to go to my own damn bed in my own damn space and I can lock the fucking door if I want.

And dream about the sudden and catastrophic destruction of my crops while I’m singing Gloria Gaynor in a shower that loses pressure and turns to ice while I’m soaping my armpits. Like every night. So that will be awesome.

Naturally, Johanssen is there to help me untape and untangle, and she walk-and-talks me all the way to my quarters. Where Beck meets me. They look at each other in all these super-significant ways, which, fine, they’re together, I get it, but then Beck says, “So, we thought we might sleep here.”

Johanssen, for the first time since the tarp tore off my nose cone, says nothing.

“Because we figured you might sleep better,” Beck adds.

“With three people in a one-guy bed?” But the thing is, that actually _sleeping_ with other people sounds restful. Relaxing. Kind of nice. “Uh, you guys know I wake up panicking every little while, right?”

Beck purses his lips. “Medical data says only about six times a night. We’re comfortable with that. Hell, we’re _used_ to that.” They slide open the door panel and okay, so yeah, they did actually plan for three people because, and I don’t really know how this has been accomplished because it’s not like the Hermes isn’t a spaceship, with shit nailed down for acceleration and stuff, they’ve moved a second bed into here and shoved them together. It’s big enough for three close people to share.

“You can say no, though,” Beck tells me. He’s behind me, his chest against my back and looking over my shoulder. 

Johanssen is in the room ahead of me, but looks back and nods. “If we mis-guessed,” she adds.

I have no idea what to do about any of this, but the prospect of being sandwiched between other humans sounds… kind of amazing. Like having personal teddy bears with free will. Wait, no, not like that, that sounds terrifying. But I just step forward and nod, and they take it for what it is. 

As we settle into the big bed, Johanssen who is tiny all curled back against my chest and Beck who is not wrapped around me and breathing on the back of my neck, I ask, “Wait, used to what?”

Johanssen looks over her shoulder. “There are other things, but If we missed the supply mark, they were all gonna die and I was gonna eat them to survive all the way back to Earth. We have less nightmare fodder than you, but it’s pretty good anyway.”

I lift up (ow, ribs, but fuck them) and look at her, then roll back a little and look at Beck. “Uh, when did you decide that?”

“Before we decided to come back. It was part of the plan.” Beck noses at my shoulder until I settle again. “Shut up, we wanted you back and all of us were comfortable with the risk.”

“For me?”

“Would you have done the same?”

And I mean, okay, probably, yeah, I would have, so. I let Beck wrap around me again and I feel warm, secure, and safe.

“Because also, and just by the way,” he murmurs against my ear. “When you’re ready, we thought we might look into more than just sleeping.” He noses at my shoulder some more, and what the fuck am I supposed to do with that. My whole body shudders and despite that I am far, far from healed up enough for any such thing, my dick, and I guess everything in this story is back to my junk somehow, jumps a little against Johnassen’s ass. 

Which is probably wildly inappropriate because Christ, he’s probably just fucking with me, but Johanssen giggles. “He’s not very subtle,” she says. “But it seems like you might be on board.”

And yeah, it kind of seems like I might be. 

Beck slides his hand down between my chest and her back and down past my navel. “When you’re ready,” he mutters. “Meanwhile, let’s see how many tries it takes us to collectively sleep through the night.”


End file.
